Until an FBI bust upended her life, Jeanette Maier was a
successful New Orleans madam. Her discreet clientele
included a number of powerful, high-ranking politicians.
The ensuing very public trial - both in the courtroom and
in the media focused salaciously on the fact that
Jeanette's brothel was a family affair. Jeanette ran the
business with her mother and she employed her own daughter
as an escort. Jeanette and her family ended up infamous,
their futures blighted by felony convictions, yet their
well-connected clients escaped exposure. Now, the Canal
Street Madam sets out to reinvent herself, to reclaim her
public persona, and to protect her family as she fights
back against a system that silences the powerless and
protects the elite.

This verité documentary offers a first person, intimate
view of lives rarely seen on their own terms. It reveals
the cost of public exposure and how unequal enforcement of
the law plays out for sex workers and for their clients.
It uses FBI wiretaps, brothel home-movies, and haunting
'80s stripper and family snapshots to create a complex
portrait of their lives and motivations. The Canal Street
Madam becomes a behind-the-scenes indictment of
hypocritical politicians, the challenges of single
parenthood, and the lack of protection for women whom
society relegates to an underclass, yet who service
society's most powerful.

'Jeanette is a savvy entrepreneur who
knows better than to go to the cops when she has a
problem. She goes straight to the media. With humour and
sympathy, she defends her loved ones and the rights of
working girls against threats and insults.?'
- Hot
Docs

'Director Cameron Yates gracefully
concocts an unflinching, yet utterly compassionate,
impression of the madam as she embraces her suffering
with straightlaced charm and sobering strength,
determined to carry on in the face of increasingly
tragic personal circumstances. Yates? sympathetic allure
and intimate rapport with the camera anchors this
disturbingly frank and candid personal portrait of a
slandered woman still seeking joy in a tumultuous
world.?'
- Philadelphia Film Festival